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Siem Reap: The newly restored West Mebon temple now rises from a reservoir at Cambodia's sprawling Angkor archaeological complex, the latest in a century of conservation projects led by former colonial power France.French President Emmanuel Macron and Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni will inaugurate the nearly 1,000-year-old temple on the sidelines of a summit of French-speaking nations in Phnom Penh on November 15-16.Conservationists have restored most of the original 16 towers and surrounding walls over the past 14 years, and put the finishing touches on a stone marker at the entrance last week.The temple is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site at Angkor, once the centre of the Khmer Empire, and includes the national treasure, Angkor Wat.It was here that archaeologists unearthed the largest bronze statue ever found in Cambodia, 'Reclining Vishnu', which is now touring the world. 

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00:23I
00:24It was because of France that we began to do the degradation of the Natoya in the beginning of the
00:36XXth century.
00:38When they arrived, the monuments were dominated by the forests.
00:46It was because the Cambogs don't forget to do the Natoya.
01:09The old generation, they have much experience with knowledge or something.
01:13So they transfer all the knowledge to us and then we can learn and then we can practice.
01:19And then we also take our experiment by ourselves and then we can generate or expand the knowledge more.
01:28And then we will able to work by ourselves, by our new generation.
01:50There is an extraordinary discovery that appeared in 1936.
01:56There is a village man who made a dream.
02:00And in his dream, Bouddha came to see him and asked him to deliver his lands where he was entouffing.
02:07The village man was afraid.
02:09He went to see the director of the conservation of the time, Henri Marshall.
02:14And when they arrived at the temple of the occidental temple, they went to the center of the temple,
02:19which is called the central hill.
02:21And they took their digging.
02:23Because they had already digging, but they found some elements, but not very concrete.
02:28And this time, in digging, exactly at the place, they discovered a colossal bronze statue,
02:33which is actually the statue of Vishnu Kouché.
02:49We are archaeologists at the Ecole Française Extrême-Orient.
02:52We have this specificity to have architects, but also archaeologists, epigraphists,
02:57so specialists in inscriptions, philologists, manuscripts, anthropologists,
03:01to try to cover a little bit the domain of knowledge,
03:04which will allow us to better understand the history and the society of the Cambodge,
03:09at the time in Korean, but also to today.
03:13Thank you very much forấtprus now.
03:17You're welcome.
03:18.

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